Rwanda has prospered for the past three decades while Malawi has floundered because Rwanda is run by an effective dictator engaging in developmentalist nation-building. Malawi has no equivalent power center, and certainly none with the beneficence to try and raise up their countrymen.
Had this statue been erected in 2006, it would’ve been an immortal masterpiece. Had it been sculpted in 2016, it would still have been a great statue but flawed. But it was made in 2026. Alas, what can one say?
Well yeah, LLMs generate resumes (and other text) that they judge as superior to alternative plausible texts. Why would that judgement change just because a different instance hasn't seen it before? To anthropomorphize it, it's like having a hiring manager write a resume, get amnesia, and then have to judge it among other resumes.
Seems like obvious thing. If LLM have some weights involved on what is good resume to write there is very likely correlation to what would be good resume to rate. And this is probably a even good thing, at least from model quality perspective. Model itself should rate highly whatever it produces. There should be correlation between output and review of same output.
And your name is now Berningular Farshthruster III. I gave you that name.
Which is, of course, silly. It is a name for you, just like Teresa T is a name for the whale, but it’s not your/their name, just like the RRS Sir David Attenborough is not named Boaty McBoatface (to the chagrin of most). Simon does not have the authority to unilaterally¹ name the whale (which is why the exercise makes sense).
¹ Important point. If the name started being recognised and used by consensus of those with the purview to do so (much like the thagomizer²), then Simon would have named the whale, but it would only become its name at that point.
> Simon does not have the authority to unilaterally¹ name the whale
There's no such thing as authority to name a whale, and anyways I don't believe authority is strictly needed. A name is what people use to refer to something, full stop. It is only required that names become common-ish parlance; the more well known they are, the more they feel like the 'real' name. The inverse of Ohms is named Mhos (imo much more recognizable than the official name, "siemens"). The "#" symbol is named the hashtag, octothorp, pound sign, tic-tac-toe, number sign, and probably a million other things. Which one of these is the "real" primary name? I think intuitively we know that the real one is whatever people around us are most familiar with. You should take a guess, and I'll put the wikipedia-suggested-answer in the footnotes [1]. I bet your name for it is different than the 'official' wikipedia suggestion.
In the case of the whale, the _only_ name that is associated with that whale is Teresa T. I think this immediately makes it the most valid name of that whale.
Names are submitted and voted on. Those help with identifying individuals (which is what names are for) and monitoring the whale populations. Crucially, consensus matters. Otherwise I can just say that the whale in Pillar Point Harbor near Half Moon Bay is actually called Becky B, which is just as valid as the name Simon gave, but now there are two names which leads to confusion.
As an experiment, after writing that I asked ChatGPT for the name of the whale. It said it was Teresa T. Then I asked if it was sure it’s not Becky B. It gave me a much longer answer stating that it was in fact Becky B and that Teresa T was “likely an incorrect or early misidentification”. I then tried to convince it of other names, but it stayed adamant that Becky B is the right name, even saying it’s confirmed by databases such as Happywhale! https://chatgpt.com/s/t_69f20822afc08191874613a969c25356
> A name is what people use to refer to something (…)
The entirety of your argument is encapsulated by my previous footnote, and is clearly why I used the word “unilaterally” and said it was an important point.
And again, Simon’s exercise in itself only makes sense if it’s not his purview to name the whale. If it is, then it falls flat. Otherwise it’s like “predicting” you’ll do jumping jacks the next time you’re at the supermarket. If it’s in your hands to make it true or false, you’re not predicting it. Similarly, it only makes sense as an exercise to prove the gullibility of LLMs to do something which you yourself can’t make true.
Sure. None of those organisations have power over you (unless you work for them, I guess). You’re free to use whatever name you like for whatever you want. Whichever organisation names venomous snakes has no power over you either, but if you’re bitten by one and they ask you which one it was so they can administer an antidote, I highly recommend you stay with the name they gave it instead of some other name you made up. You do you, though, don’t let me stop you.
Ya lol, I love this world where you tell a doctor "help, I'm having a cardiac arrest!" and they say "no, you're experiencing sudden cardiac death, now sit down and act dignified!!"
I am speaking from a position of total ignorance, so this is probably a dumb take, but I don't see why rich nations[1] don't simply subsidize mass nuclear energy production as state policy. The two main issues with nuclear are unit cost (solvable if you build dozens/hundreds in serial production) and financing (a reactor with a 30 year payback period is much more viable with 3.5% sovereign financing compared to 8% private bonds). France did it 50 years ago with more primitive reactor designs. China is currently doing it somewhat halfheartedly. I bet if the U.S. committed to $2 trillion to one standardized design and heavily used eminent domain, America would have knocked electricity costs down by half within a decade.
[1] Honestly probably only really viable in China and the U.S. plus maybe South Korea; nuclear is unpopular in Japan after Fukushima, and I doubt the E.U. would be able to coordinate everything. Everyone else is probably too poor outside of petrostates, which have the whole petro thing going on.
> I don't see why rich nations[1] don't simply subsidize mass nuclear energy production as state policy
> Honestly probably only really viable in China and the U.S. plus maybe South Korea
Because it costs a lot of money.
For example, India quietly (by HN and Reddit standards) passed a nuclear energy megabill in December which has a TAM of $214 Billion [0]. French (EDF), American (Westinghouse, Holtec, GE Vernova Hitachi), Russian (Rosatom), and Korean (Hyundai) JVs with Indian Public (NPTC, BHEL) and Private (Tata, L&T, Jindal Group) players are now able to build and distribute nuclear energy without dealing with an older SOE and can subsidize the buildout [1] using Green Bonds, which gives them access to around $56 Billion in capital [2] with an added .
These players will also be eligible for India's $2.5 Billion SMR subsidy [3]. This also helps India's $160 Billion data center buildout [4] which is being subsidized by the Indian government [5], and piggybacks on India's $205 Billion infrastructure buildout [6].
Other countries can do that as well, but if they are fine spending tens to hundreds of billions of dollars - that's where the blocker arises, but most of the players with this technology are now backlogged with orders from this buildout in India and other existing and in-progress buildouts.
> outside of petrostates, which have the whole petro thing going on
The UAE [7] is participating in financing India's nuclear buildout as part of their defense pact.
The U.S. spends $500 billion a year on electricity[1]. $2 trillion dollars worth of bonds to lower the price per kWh is modest, especially given that it would enable new tax revenue from manufacturing and chemical production, where electricity is usually the highest input cost, even in China.
> The U.S. spends $500 billion a year on electricity
But the American energy industry has negative net margins [0], which makes buildouts difficult without significant state support as the American energy industry is operating at a loss after operations cost are included.
> $2 trillion dollars worth of bonds to lower the price per kWh is modest
Land and Liability.
The upfront cost to build is significantly higher in the US because land is privately owned. On the other hand, India's federal and state governments are subsidizing land purchases for nuclear reactors as part of the SHANTI Act. The only other large economy doing something similar is China.
Furthermore, liability has remained a major issue in the US. India [1] and China [2] both gave nuclear operators a broad liability shield which externalizes the cost of a nuclear accident, especially for SMRs as they cap out in the $30-50 million range in India and China.
If the US can provide a similar liability shield beyond what is already on the books, buildout would be much faster, but this is politically untenable as can be seen with the data center buildout. Imagine the attack ads - "Trump"/"Newsom"/"Vance"/"Pritzker" are poisoning innocent Americans while in the pocket of Wall Street and BigTech. A growing number of Americans view any kind of infrastructure buildout as a subsidy for rich people, almost as if there was an ongoing social media campaign for years that has solidified this sentiment amongst Americans [3].
The big capital players at this point in this space are the US, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Russia, and France. All the other 6 (even Russia) have blocked Chinese access to initiatives and subsidizes for domestic nuclear buildouts, and Russia is also blocked from 4 of them.
That said, the US has quietly started similar initatives as well, like the $80 Billion SMR buildout [4] but HN will never give Trump a win.
> Which is why I said to subsidize it as state policy in the original comment
And as I pointed out, it's almost impossible because of the political implications
> there should be liberal use of eminent domain
Eminent domain is de facto impossible in the US in 2026 and would take decades of litigation for a project the size of an SMR.
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Even the current megaproject the Trump admin initiated will come on the chopping block this election cycle.
Hell, look at ProPublica [0], UC Berkeley Law's [1], and former Democrat political appointees [2] opposition despite this being almost the exact same as similar initiatives we worked on during the Biden admin.
Once the Republicans are out of office, they'll go on the same attack like they did with the IRA.
We have a far-right [3] and a far-left [4] media ecosystem that are backed and subsidized by our enemies who mutually attempt to undermine such initiatives.
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